This specification relates to the field of educational technology, and more particularly to a remote laboratory architecture and gateway.
Colleges and universities use engineering laboratories to reinforce learning, giving students the opportunity to turn classroom theory into hands-on experience. In labs, students are able to observe phenomena they learn about in class, and explore how varying inputs affect experimental results. Because laboratory equipment is expensive, schools may be limited in the number of students that can be accommodated, or may require student to work in larger groups to share lab equipment. Laboratory equipment may also sit idle when it is not convenient to have facilities open for students to access.
It is known in the prior art to increase students' access to laboratory facilities by offering remote laboratories, which may be operable for example over the internet. Remote laboratories can be made available 24-hours a day, and a plurality of schools can share equipment. This can allow smaller local or private institutions to provide access to equipment available to larger and better-funded institutions. In an exemplary prior art remote laboratory architecture, students remotely access a personal computer (PC) communicatively coupled to a network such as the internet. The PC is also communicatively coupled to and configured to control experimental hardware. Students may log on to the PC, control the experiment, and log results. In some cases, features that cannot easily be controlled remotely (such as circuit layouts) may be emulated by software, including a graphical user interface (GUI).